December 1, 1955 - Seamstress and civil rights activist Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, sparking the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. Within days, the Montgomery Improvement Association is founded to coordinate the boycott. King is elected president of the organization.

January 30, 1956 - King's house is bombed while he is at a meeting. His wife and daughter, home at the time, are uninjured.

1956 - After the U.S. Supreme Court rules that bus segregation laws are unconstitutional, the Montgomery boycott ends. King emerges as a national civil rights leader.

1957 - The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is established in Atlanta, with King as president.

1960 - Moves from Montgomery to Atlanta and becomes co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.

April 1963 - King is arrested for leading a march in Birmingham, Alabama. While in solitary confinement he writes an essay entitled "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

August 28, 1963 - During the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The demonstration is attended by more than 250,000 people.

1963 - Is named Time magazine's Man of the Year.

July 2, 1964 - King stands behind President Lyndon B. Johnson as Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.